Sunday, October 21, 2007

Help on Jn 10:10 Vaticanus

Would someone be able to check John 10:10 Vaticanus B/03for the reading

Ο ΚΛΕΠΤΗΣ ΟΥΚ ΕΡΧΕΤΑΙ Η ΜΗ ΙΝΑ ΚΛΕΨΗ

My blurry PDF does not make the H MH clear at all, though Swanson records this as listed above. Can someone confirm Swanson's transcription, here? (Naturally, I do not have access to photographs or facsimiles beyond this PDF freebie, or I wouldn't be asking.)

8 comments
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I am checking the color facsimile from 1968. There is at least one correction involved. An EPSILON is written over what is now a IOTA (but the IOTA could have been an HTA). The corrected text in my interpretation reads EI MH (defintely not H MH, so Swanson is incorrect). However, it is more difficult to say what is the reading of B*. It was perhaps H MH, although there seems to be an erased NU after the IOTA. Did the scribe first write INA before he realized that he had omitted EI MH and tried to repare the mistake. I cannot say.

Thank you.I can see the correction in my PDF, but the large space between the left leg of an assumed HTA and the MH puzzles me. An erasure would make sense and a N caused by the later INA might be a good possibility. On the other hand, H might make sense as repressenting the sound [i] in the fourth century. Do you see traces of the N, as N, not H? In other words, is that left leg before the space more clearly another IOTA to join the correction E, or is there an indication of it being an erased HTA or NU? The N tend to have a distinct stroke in B03, thicker than the H, so it may be possible to discern a probability which was erased. If someone has access to that beautiful facsimile at Tyndale House...

In defense of Swanson, he lists the reading of B*, so he would not have listed the (E)I from between the lines. (It appears that a transcription in Tischendorf records the correction EI, according to a friend.) But Swanson lists H, though it now sounds like it doesn't exist at all.

RB: "My question remains whether the NY is any more certain than a HTA."

Well, the IOTA as it stands now has a little tiny mark in the right middle which may be a smudge or suggest an orignal HTA that has been erased. But the NY is rather certain, the trace is clearly visible. I would go for:

B*vid INBcorr EI

...so the difference in relation to the IGNTP is that I would put "vid" after B*.

Okay, I take this opportunity to point to the Swanson errata list maintained by Wieland Willker here:

http://www-user.uni-bremen.de/~wie/texte/Swanson-errata.html

I would like to encourage people who have noted errors in Swanson to send them to Wieland who says he collects all errors even if it has been about a year since he updated the page. You will find his e-mail at the top of the page. I will send him a link to this post so that Jn 10:10 in B can be added.